


True Compass

by meeks00



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-11
Updated: 2010-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:03:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meeks00/pseuds/meeks00
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Standing there on the doorstep, Brad feels like a visitor or a stranger on the doormat Nate picked out three years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Compass

When Brad arrives home, he is exhausted — mentally from the things he’s seen, physically from the strain of the things he’s done. When he arrives home, a few weeks, a few months, entire eras in someone else’s life have passed without him. Some of his own time — his own life — have passed as well, but those have been ripped from him into pieces and left buried in foreign soil.

There is no one who will remember those parts of him. Often he is glad of this fact.

Other times, however, on silent nights like these, Brad feels the pang of the emptiness where those parts used to fill him. He wonders if one day he will be away, will leave so many bits of himself oversees that home will somehow become somewhere else. On nights like these, Brad sometimes wonders if anyone would notice.

Standing there on the doorstep, he feels like a visitor or a stranger on the doormat Nate picked out three years ago. The word 'Welcome' is spelled out in a script-like font, black letters on a floral backdrop of earthy tones. It is warm and welcoming, like it should be. The mat is plush beneath his combat boots.

His boots are not caked with dirt and dust and blood. Rather, they are newly polished and have a shine akin to that of a beetle’s exoskeleton under the light of a match.

Brad stands in the spotlight of the porch lantern, as crisply attired as the others since departure on-base, as if Command hoped to expel any proof of their having been overseas as they return to the real world, as if being clothed with just the mask of the commercial Marine without the grit would arm them against the dangers of home.

Brad bends down on one knee for the key beneath the garden gnome with the red hat. Like the welcome mat, Nate insisted on it. The key reflects diamonds of light into his eyes before he wraps his fingers around it.

Something warm always fills him when he sees the key lying there, as if a part of him is worried that it will be gone one day and he will have no way in.

When he straightens, he inserts and turns the key. He steps inside, takes in the dark interior, the shine of the 52" plasma screen hanging above the fireplace, the black shadows of the speaker system installed in the walls. He sees Nate’s unmistakable stamp on their home in the military-like precision of the furniture arrangement, the orderly appearance of the vases and plants and books.

He hears a noise to his nine, turns his head just slightly, takes in the shadow in the hallway.

Nate stretches his arms above his head, fingertips just brushing against the hallway ceiling. He looks around, blind in the dark, and Brad watches him until he can see the other man key in on his tall frame in the middle of the living room, the bridge of his nose shining like the arrow of a compass pointing north.

When Nate speaks, his voice is gravelly from sleep, warm from something else. "Welcome home," he says.

Brad feels his holes fill up just a little bit more.

 

__

 

When he first arrives home, Brad has trouble sleeping. Often he gets up to splash his face with lukewarm water, runs his fingers under the tap as he jerks the knobs from too hot to too cold, just because he can. Other times he pads into the living room in his fresh socks, the smell of his newly laundered civvies too sweet, the feel of them too soft against his skin as he plops onto their sofa. A few of those times Nate wakes up, follows him into their bathroom to slide hard hands and strong arms around his chest, follows him into the living room to straddle his lap with firm, runner legs on the couch.

Later Brad can fall asleep, exhausted mentally, physically — but spent in a different way. On these nights, swathed in the midst of blankets and another person’s body heat instead of hard dirt and sand, Brad can fall asleep forgetting to listen to the difference between their breathing as he slips from consciousness.

But on other nights, he stands outside, listens to the swish of leaves on leaves, to the sound of barking dogs, to the whir of cars driving by. He thinks they are foreign. Feels he doesn’t quite fit.

It is on one such night that he finally walks inside. The sun is coming up, drenching the world in soft tones that make everything appear washed out, drained. It makes him more tired than when he first arrived home.

Brad walks back inside through the kitchen, but he stops from entering further when he sees a shadow in the middle of the living room.

Nate stands stock still in the glow of the flickering light of the television, awash in an almost sickening type of strobe light, wearing only his briefs. Then he turns slowly, looks around the room.

Brad realizes with a clench in his gut that he should have turned off the TV before stepping outside. He sees his running shoes left haphazardly under the coffee table, his motorcycle helmet left on the armchair. There is a coffee mug on the mantle, a magazine crumpled on the ground by his shoes.

A hot, uncomfortable feeling spreads through him, as if alighting beneath his skin. "I’ll fix it," he says. His voice sounds so loud over the white noise of the TV even though he was trying to be quiet.

Nate jerks his head up, eyes shining slightly in the dim light. After a moment, he shakes his head, and Brad sees the flash of white of his teeth. "No I — " He pauses.

Brad walks into the room, tucks the helmet into the crook of his arm, bends down for the magazine.

A warm hand slides up his back. "No. Don’t."

When Brad straightens and turns to face him, Nate seems like he’s laughing, but he’s making no sound. "What?" he asks.

"I just — " Nate stops, shakes his head as if in frustration, and then he sighs. He reaches out a hand and slides its warmth around the nape of Brad’s neck, rubs a circle beneath Brad’s ear. "Sometimes I wake up when you’re overseas, and I get up to see where you’ve gone, and everything is just how I’ve left it." With his free hand, he pulls away the helmet and tosses it lightly back onto the armchair. Then he places that hand around Brad and pulls him closer, palm like a hot stamp at the small of his back. "I don’t even realize what it is I’m looking for — I know where I put all of your things when you leave."

He laughs, and it sounds like it falls from his lips in pieces. Brad shakes his head, as if to dispel that thought from Nate’s mind, or maybe to shake the image of it, the emptiness, away from his own. He steps forward into the solidity, the warmth of Nate’s body. He brings his hands up to cradle the man’s face, the scruff scratching his palms, the smooth skin easing the calluses of his fingertips.

He feels so full then that he wonders at ever feeling like any of him could have been forgotten elsewhere.

"I like seeing your things lying around," Nate says, and he grins against the kiss Brad presses to his lips.

 

**


End file.
